BBC One: …. “imagine … My Name is Kwame”

As the Young Vic celebrates its 50th anniversary, Alan Yentob hears how a young Southall boy called Ian Roberts became the artist Kwame Kwei-Armah.
Kwame Kwei-Armah is one of British theatre’s most exciting creative leaders. Currently Artistic Director of London’s Young Vic, he has had a successful career as an actor, writer and director on both sides of the Atlantic. He came to fame playing paramedic Finlay Newton in the BBC drama Casualty – and his groundbreaking play Elmina’s Kitchen was one of the first by a black British writer staged at the National Theatre and in the West End.

In his first two years at the Young Vic he has programmed a run of sell-out shows, including Death Of A Salesman, Twelfth Night, Tree, and the controversial Pulitzer Prize-winning Fairview.

Kwei- Armah says: “Theatre isn’t here to serve the one percent or the four percent or the 10 percent. It has to be a community centre, it has to be an art centre, it has to be a place that says every single person is included.”

imagine … My Name is Kwame is a BBC Studios production and is commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC One by Mark Bell.